LONGMONT -- Maybe this happens in other places. Or maybe this is just one of those "only in Boulder County" business stories.

Larry Germann recently brought his company, Left Hand Design Corp., to 10,600 square feet on Miller Drive in Longmont. Though the business has been around 19 years, it's the first "official" commercial space the company has occupied. Previously, Left Hand Design, which makes precision positioning components primarily for the aerospace industry, operated out of Germann's house in unincorporated Boulder County.

"It wasn't so bad when we first started," said Bill Tobin, who has worked at Left Hand Design for 15 years. "Then, we started getting more employees. ... We were just crowded. We needed to hire two more people and we didn't have room for one more person."

Left Hand Design employs 12 people -- they've hired one since moving in February -- and last year did $2.4 million in sales.

The company was launched by Germann and three other ex-Ball employees. Ex, as in, they all got laid off at the same time.

They started their company based on products they had been building at Ball for the previous decade.

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They knew a lot of the customers and thought they could build the same things they had been at less cost and with a quicker turnaround time. Those traits remain at the core of the company today.

Among Left Hand Design's primary products are "fine-steering mirrors."

Along with the "servo control" boxes -- similar to servers -- that Left Hand Design builds to control the movement of the mirrors -- customers use them in a variety of aerospace, aircraft and terrestrial applications.

Extremely small scews, 0.5mm x 3mm long, are seen sitting on a penny for scale inside the lab last week at Left Hand Design Corp. in Longmont.
(Matthew Jonas/Times-Call)
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Matthew Jonas
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"Our customers install this in a telescope, and it does the fine pointing on it," Germann said as an example as he held up one of the mirrors.

The mirrors range in size from 50 millimeters -- less than 2 inches -- on the small end to the 7-inch to 9-inch range.

The company also builds the actuators used to control the mirrors. "An actuator is a special form of a motor," Germann said. "It's a linear motor -- it moves things in a straight line."

Each mirror unit contains multiple actuators. A current is sent through the copper coils in the actuators and, as they interact with magnets, the mirror is moved -- ever so slightly.

"We control to resolutions of nanoradians," Germann said.

Left Hand Design Corp. founder Larry Germann unpacks one of his company's motion simulators that will be used to help test aerospace equipment. (Matthew Jonas/Times-Call)
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Matthew Jonas
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Asked to clarify in layman's terms, he said a nanoradian is equivalent to one-billionth of a radian, which is equal to 57 degrees, which is, er ... "a darn small angle," he helpfully explained.

Left Hand Designs also sells the actuators on their own -- Raytheon is a favorite customer for those -- and it sells "motion simulators" that companies would use to test their own satellite and aerospace equipment.

"We don't do any classified work," said Germann, who identified himself as an electrical engineer turned systems engineer turned entrepreneur. "About 50 percent of our work is (Department of Defense), another 45 percent is NASA, and the other 5 percent is commercial."

The company happens to be on an upswing at the moment, Germann said, but it was only a few years ago where it took losses three straight years, which had it going into debt just to survive until the next upswing. The company since has paid off all that debt and started accumulating reserves again, which he said, he knows he'll likely have to dip into again. Such is the nature of the aerospace industry, he said.

But at least now his employees have room to breathe. And once they get settled in, maybe they'll find a more permanent home for some of the tools they use to build their products. Mirrors worth tens of thousands of dollars each are still stacked delicately in cardboard fruit boxes, while plastic salsa tubs hold plastic nut covers and empty yogurt containers hold miniscule washers.

"Doing things the cost-effective way is our style, and that's what's enabled us to succeed," Germann said.

With three times the space, Left Hand Design now has room to grow. And it's been a long time coming, he said.

"The Realtor that helped me buy this ... started working with us in 2002."

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